Badder Santa
A film that will easily go down as one of the most cynical and mean-spirited Christmas movies ever will also go down as one of the funniest. Billy Bob Thornton brings the right touch of bitterness and pathos to the role of Willie, an ex-con who only works 30 days out of the year at Christmastime as a mall Santa just so he can rob the place on Christmas Eve and take off with the loot for a year only to resurface again in a different city come the holidays. Matching him almost step for step is midget actor Tony Cox, best remembered as one of the Evans Family in I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, as his partner in crime who dresses up like an elf to complete the scam. Their antagonistic interplay is natural and hilarious, and indeed the best and funniest scenes are a (usually drunken) Thornton taking kids on his lap to ask them what do they want for Christmas, usually to get a obscene response in kind. The fact that Thornton was allegedly really drunk during filming is almost amazing in that it makes the character legit while his acting is still focused enough to make the most out of every cuss word. Also notable is Brett Kelly as the (very naïve) kid who believes so blindly that Thornton is the real Santa that he allows him to crash at the large mansion where he lives with just him and his Grandma (played by Cloris Leachman in an out-of-left-field unbilled part). At times, the kid seems so pathetic that it’s borderline creepy, but his interaction with Thornton, who consistently calls him out on his idiot savant nature, is brilliant nonetheless. In other roles, John Ritter gets some laughs as the family-values obsessed mall manager even though he is sadly underused in this, his last film; Lauren Graham is hot and sexy as the female bartender with a Santa fetish who hooks up with Thornton, but also could have done with more screen time; Lauren Tom reappears as the midget’s materially obsessed mail-order bride; and Bernie Mac manages to steal almost every scene he’s in as the mall’s increasingly suspicious security chief. Towards the end, the overall dark nature of the story seems to backfire at times into almost depressing territory, complete with the brutal murder of a major character, and the resolution really isn’t effective enough to pull the viewer’s heartstrings as intended. However, the screenplay’s inspired torrent of obscenities are enough to keep the laughs coming, along with several awesome setpieces such as Thornton teaching the kid to fight in a boxing ring (with the midget’s help) and Thornton drunkenly tearing apart the Christmas props in full view of the children. In the end, one of the funniest Xmas movies of all time undoubtedly, but definitely not one for the whole family…
9/10